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How Space Stations Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: This episode of Stuff You Should Know is sponsored by Squarespace.
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Speaker 1: website apart. Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from
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Speaker 1: House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry.
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Speaker 1: This is Stuff you Should Know. Okay, you sounded like
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Speaker 1: Steve Rule. We were just talking about Steve Rule and
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Speaker 1: that was very brulesque, brulesque. Not brulesque, right, brulesque brulesque.
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Speaker 1: You're saying you we should do a movie. I'm surprised
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Speaker 1: to I could watch a continuous loop of brules Rules
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Speaker 1: over and over and over, and people thought, you're don't
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Speaker 1: be done. Was an homage to that which omas are
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Speaker 1: rip off depending and it was well, it was it
1:01
Speaker 1: was neither, but it it was reminiscent of it in
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Speaker 1: good ways. But I don't think that that meant that
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Speaker 1: ripped it off, or that you were paying tribute to
1:08
Speaker 1: It's definitely not intentional. It was just, you know, two
1:11
Speaker 1: two great things that go great together. Can't there be both?
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Speaker 1: Like ESA scuts, Yeah, they go great with kit cats.
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Speaker 1: Oh man, they'd be good. Just take two full kit
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Speaker 1: cats and put two ESA's cups in the middle like
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Speaker 1: a sandwich. I think you just came up with something
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Speaker 1: the news more the reci cat, Um chuckers. Yes. Have
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Speaker 1: you ever looked to the sky at night, seen some
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Speaker 1: stars flying by and thought, why don't we live up there? Uh? Sure?
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Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the I S S cruising? No?
1:50
Speaker 1: I used to, Um, apparently you can. I used, Yes,
1:53
Speaker 1: I used to get either text or emails. I can't
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Speaker 1: remember that. Would you just put in your your zip
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Speaker 1: code and UM it sends you texts alerts when the
2:04
Speaker 1: I S S is going to be flying overhead. I
2:06
Speaker 1: thought you're gonna say one of the lead astronauts would
2:09
Speaker 1: just text you be like, h are you doing? We're
2:12
Speaker 1: over your house right now. But I mean, basically it's
2:15
Speaker 1: not from the astronaut, but it's the same thing. It's saying, like,
2:18
Speaker 1: look up in this direction at this time and you
2:21
Speaker 1: you should be able to see the I S S
2:23
Speaker 1: pretty neat. Yeah. I don't think we actually ever went
2:26
Speaker 1: out and looked at it, because it was always at
2:28
Speaker 1: like three in the morning or something like that. Yeah,
2:30
Speaker 1: this really like thrills me to no end. Once I
2:34
Speaker 1: started looking into this, like I don't I never paid
2:36
Speaker 1: a lot of attention, and it really just dawned on me,
2:39
Speaker 1: like people are living in outer space continuous full time.
2:43
Speaker 1: The International Space Station has been continuously inhabited since it
2:46
Speaker 1: was launched. Yeah. In fact, they just took they're one
2:52
Speaker 1: hundred thousand orbit of Earth. That's really neat in May
2:56
Speaker 1: of this year and Expedition forty seven began in Mark.
3:00
Speaker 1: That's so cool, man, And like we just it's like
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Speaker 1: you were saying, you you don't really stop and think
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Speaker 1: about it, But we're living in space now. Humanity is
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Speaker 1: extended at least into Earth's or of it, right, that's
3:12
Speaker 1: where we're living, um, And we just kind of seemed
3:16
Speaker 1: to take that for granted. But that wasn't always the
3:19
Speaker 1: cases actually, And I think the reason why we do
3:22
Speaker 1: kind of take it for granted is because the conception
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Speaker 1: of living in space that we're at right now is
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Speaker 1: remedial compared to where everyone expected it to be in
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Speaker 1: like the mid seventies, when the idea of space colonization
3:34
Speaker 1: was at its peak. I mean NASA Aims Research Center
3:38
Speaker 1: was conducting summer studies is what they were called, where
3:41
Speaker 1: they would just get the public really jazzed about living
3:44
Speaker 1: in space. Um. And the best you can say, or
3:47
Speaker 1: the least you can say, is that it bore some
3:50
Speaker 1: pretty awesome artists surrenderings and space colonies will look like
3:54
Speaker 1: It seemed like every other issue of Popular Science was
3:57
Speaker 1: just some cool new uh pick of like, you know,
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Speaker 1: one day we're gonna be living out here, right exactly,
4:04
Speaker 1: but the one day seemed a lot closer than than
4:07
Speaker 1: it does now right. Um. But at the at the
4:10
Speaker 1: most you can say that that space colony fever that
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Speaker 1: was going on in the seventies definitely laid the groundwork
4:16
Speaker 1: paved the way for where we are now, which is
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Speaker 1: living in space. We just don't have like Stanley Kubrick
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Speaker 1: esque space hotels that are big rotating wheels at the moment.
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Speaker 1: It doesn't mean we're not going to. It just didn't
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Speaker 1: happen as fast as everybody thought it was going to.
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Speaker 1: And I was trying to figure out why, and apparently
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Speaker 1: it's because of the Shuttle program. Like the these the
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Speaker 1: space colony fever was based on the idea that launching
4:43
Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle was going to be way cheaper than
4:46
Speaker 1: launching any of the rockets have been previously. That didn't
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Speaker 1: pan out to be the case, and that there would
4:50
Speaker 1: be something like, um, it's gonna be word like at
4:56
Speaker 1: least sixty launches a year, which is which didn't pan
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Speaker 1: out to be the case either. But they thought that, yeah,
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Speaker 1: it was just gonna we're gonna be going back and
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Speaker 1: forth to space for like next to nothing all the time,
5:06
Speaker 1: and that we would be colonizing space pretty quickly. That
5:08
Speaker 1: didn't pan out. Um. The Space Shuttle program didn't didn't
5:12
Speaker 1: pan out to be that as cheap or as frequent, um.
5:16
Speaker 1: And so this dream of space colony or this enthusiasm
5:18
Speaker 1: for space colonization was kind of lost, But luckily it
5:23
Speaker 1: wasn't lost by the actual engineers who were in charge
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Speaker 1: of putting people in space and figuring out how to
5:28
Speaker 1: live in space. And that whole idea is probably still coming,
5:32
Speaker 1: it's just a little further down the road. Yeah, And
5:35
Speaker 1: there were there are many, many, many, hundreds and hundreds
5:39
Speaker 1: of people that helped make this reality over the years.
5:41
Speaker 1: But a lot of this can be laid at the
5:43
Speaker 1: feet of Mr. Verna von Braun, who was the architect
5:47
Speaker 1: of the US space program, and he was the big
5:51
Speaker 1: champion of space stations early on, like in a real
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Speaker 1: viable way. Well, he was like the Carl Sagan of
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Speaker 1: his day. He realized that he had a quote he
6:01
Speaker 1: said that we can publish scientific papers and treatises till
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Speaker 1: health freezes over. But if we don't get the attention
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Speaker 1: of the taxpayer, we're going We're not going anywhere. And
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Speaker 1: how do you do that? You start putting people in
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Speaker 1: the moon and start building space stations. Well, even even
6:15
Speaker 1: more basic than that, he started he wrote like popular
6:18
Speaker 1: articles and popular magazines to get the public's imagination prime
6:22
Speaker 1: for that kind of thing. Yeah, and his idea was
6:24
Speaker 1: it was it was not just like, hey, look at
6:26
Speaker 1: a neat thing we can do. It's you know, you
6:28
Speaker 1: have an Antarctic outpost. You have back in the old days,
6:32
Speaker 1: he had an outwest outpost. He was like, we need
6:34
Speaker 1: an outpost. We need a place where people can live
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Speaker 1: and work and as their base station. Essentially, sure, space
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Speaker 1: is a frontier, but you watch the star trek knows
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Speaker 1: that the final frontier, right, Well, that's what we think,
6:48
Speaker 1: that's what we thought back then. I'm sure there's other
6:50
Speaker 1: frontiers ner dimensions to explore that kind of thing. Right. Uh, well,
6:57
Speaker 1: let's just talk about why what What are some of
7:01
Speaker 1: the reasons we should do this. Um you mentioned um
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Speaker 1: just capturing the public, and it certainly will would do
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Speaker 1: a lot to rally people around spending funds on you know,
7:12
Speaker 1: space travel, NASA allocating funds towards this kind of thing, right,
7:17
Speaker 1: you mean space tourism. No, no, no, not space tourism.
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Speaker 1: But just initially, you know, they needed the support of
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Speaker 1: the popular American opinion, right, which is why Von Brown said,
7:29
Speaker 1: I'm gonna like reach out to the public directly through
7:32
Speaker 1: Collier's magazine. He did a three part he hosted a
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Speaker 1: three part show UM on like the Wonderful World of
7:38
Speaker 1: Disney about living in space and we really got people
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Speaker 1: jazzed about this back in the fifties. Then it peaked
7:44
Speaker 1: again in the seventies. Like I was saying, yeah, but
7:46
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons that you would want to
7:48
Speaker 1: have a working space station is, um, aside from the
7:52
Speaker 1: convenience of you know, having a having it up there
7:55
Speaker 1: and not having to go back and forth every time
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Speaker 1: you want to do something, is to thinks are different
8:00
Speaker 1: up there, and you can do different things without gravity
8:03
Speaker 1: that you can't do here on Earth, like research. Yeah,
8:07
Speaker 1: like remarkable things. So it turns out gravity has a
8:10
Speaker 1: weird effect on crystals in the way they form, flaws
8:13
Speaker 1: them like inevitably. Um. But if you're out there in
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Speaker 1: micro gravity, there are far fewer flaws, and the crystals
8:20
Speaker 1: tend to form more perfectly. So you can do things
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Speaker 1: like make really good semiconductors right for microchips. Um. You
8:28
Speaker 1: can also crystallize drugs better to make them more potent.
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Speaker 1: You can really knock your socks off. So research up
8:36
Speaker 1: there that can make things better here, right a point,
8:40
Speaker 1: not just research, but figure out how to do it there,
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Speaker 1: and then build on that by building a manufacturing facility
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Speaker 1: for semiconductors out in space and then bring them back
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Speaker 1: to Earth and be like, watch how fast this baby goes.
8:54
Speaker 1: Another thing that uh, no gravity or microgravity does is
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Speaker 1: it makes flames. Um, you know flames here on Earth
9:02
Speaker 1: with our stupid gravity pulling it in every direction, makes
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Speaker 1: a flame very unsteady and unpredictable. Makes studying combustion more difficult.
9:10
Speaker 1: Remember when we talked about fire. Yeah, fire and space
9:13
Speaker 1: is very consistent and perfect. It's around. Yeah, it's so cool.
9:17
Speaker 1: So you could you could potentially with uh, with a
9:20
Speaker 1: perfect flame like that, that perfect flame that's got to
9:24
Speaker 1: be a song. Eternal flame is what you're thinking of. No,
9:28
Speaker 1: I'm saying perfect flame. Now you're thinking of eternal flame
9:34
Speaker 1: such a Josh is m It's one of my favorites. Uh.
9:38
Speaker 1: Micro gravity, though, you can have that eternal flame that
9:40
Speaker 1: is perfect and round and uh, you can study combustion
9:44
Speaker 1: in a more pure fashion, and you could build a
9:47
Speaker 1: better furnace maybe or find out how to reduce air
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Speaker 1: pollution by making things more efficient. That's just like two
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Speaker 1: things that you could do in space. I'm sure there
9:55
Speaker 1: are a thousand things we could list. Um. And as
9:59
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, some of the early ideas for
10:01
Speaker 1: space stations were these. There were concepts that were that
10:05
Speaker 1: used like moon mined minerals and materials and assembled in
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Speaker 1: space so that you didn't have to launch them from Earth.
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Speaker 1: So this whole idea of like creating things in space
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Speaker 1: was even used to form the basis of these places
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Speaker 1: where we would actually live while we were doing this stuff.
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Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. Yeah, it also offers a unique perspective
10:25
Speaker 1: on the Earth, if we're talking about landforms and oceans,
10:29
Speaker 1: your atmosphere, uh speaking of which they can take uh
10:32
Speaker 1: much better pictures looking in the other direction into deep
10:35
Speaker 1: space because they don't have that pesky atmosphere in the way, right,
10:39
Speaker 1: So lots of great reasons to be up there, um,
10:43
Speaker 1: not the least of which is something you mentioned earlier,
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Speaker 1: space tourism, which is going to happen at some point, right,
10:51
Speaker 1: Like people are looking into who is this one company?
10:54
Speaker 1: Um Galactic Suite. Yeah, they're they're still at it. Well,
10:59
Speaker 1: another that I saw there still says they're planning on
11:02
Speaker 1: launching in two thousand twelve. Oh, I thought that they
11:05
Speaker 1: thought they were still kind of I mean obviously not
11:07
Speaker 1: on that timeline. Somebody's still paying for the domain, but
11:15
Speaker 1: it still says like, um, they're gonna be They're gonna
11:18
Speaker 1: head for the star the stars in two thousand twelve.
11:21
Speaker 1: And then I found another Russian one that was looked
11:24
Speaker 1: pretty promising, but their site apparently was not updated since
11:28
Speaker 1: two thousand ten. But um, a company called Bigelow Industries
11:34
Speaker 1: very recently had SpaceX ferry capsule up to the I
11:39
Speaker 1: S S. It was an inflatable capsule that was a
11:43
Speaker 1: habitat module that was meant to be a prototype for
11:45
Speaker 1: a space hotel and they couldn't get it inflated. It
11:49
Speaker 1: was in Uh, they just aborted the mission. But um,
11:52
Speaker 1: like people are still working on the concept of of
11:55
Speaker 1: space tourism like today, well, I know, the Galactic Suite said, um,
12:00
Speaker 1: they're like, we we think it will cost a four
12:02
Speaker 1: million dollars for a weekend stay, and our data suggests
12:06
Speaker 1: that there are about forty people in the world that
12:09
Speaker 1: can and will pay for this. So um, maybe maybe
12:13
Speaker 1: their their site hasn't been updated because they got scared
12:16
Speaker 1: with the end of the world two thousand twelve things
12:18
Speaker 1: and while they were hiding in a cave somewhere, somebody
12:20
Speaker 1: played a prank on them and they're still too scared
12:23
Speaker 1: to come out and update the site. Maybe well Richard Branson,
12:26
Speaker 1: you know, he's trying to fly people into space. Still. Yeah.
12:29
Speaker 1: I looked at that. I was like, wait a minute,
12:30
Speaker 1: does this Alaskan Airlines merger? Did that kill Virgin Galactic?
12:34
Speaker 1: And apparently not, It was just Virgin America that that
12:38
Speaker 1: Alaskan Airlines took over. Apparently in a hostile takeover Um,
12:43
Speaker 1: but Virgin Galactics still at it. Okay, Well that's good.
12:46
Speaker 1: I guess if you're loaded and want to ride into space. Yeah,
12:49
Speaker 1: if you're Ashton Couture, they were on the list, right,
12:54
Speaker 1: Sure they have disposable income. Sure, send the cooch up there.
12:59
Speaker 1: All right, either one, I feel like I should take
13:04
Speaker 1: a break and regroup and then we'll start talking about
13:08
Speaker 1: space stations past. I'll take one with you, all right,
13:35
Speaker 1: let's talk about the first one, josh. Uh. We had
13:39
Speaker 1: a great episode on the space Race. It was pretty
13:42
Speaker 1: much a two I love that to nation race between
13:46
Speaker 1: the US and the Soviet Union, and they beat us
13:50
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways as far as first to
13:51
Speaker 1: the punch Man. They really did. You know, they don't
13:54
Speaker 1: get enough credit around these parts for the stuff that
13:59
Speaker 1: they did as far as space goes, because they definitely
14:02
Speaker 1: did beat us in a lot of ways, like we
14:04
Speaker 1: beat them to the moon basically, Yeah, which we pointed
14:06
Speaker 1: out in our show really got us going, sure and
14:09
Speaker 1: led to our advancements. Yeah. But also what was it? Um,
14:12
Speaker 1: there was another show we did recently, Sputnik led to
14:16
Speaker 1: Super Bowls. But do you remember we were talking about
14:18
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl In the Super Bowl episode how Sputnik
14:20
Speaker 1: like made America, post war America wake up and be like, hey,
14:24
Speaker 1: stuff being coddled in in lazy. We need to get
14:28
Speaker 1: back to innovation. Yeah, innovating again. And and it was
14:32
Speaker 1: spot Nick that did that. Yeah that's right. Um, nothing
14:36
Speaker 1: like the threat of Communist Russia or Soviet Union to
14:39
Speaker 1: get people going we're being left behind. Um. So back
14:43
Speaker 1: then they were the Soviet Union and they were the first,
14:45
Speaker 1: as we said with the saliott one station. Uh one?
14:51
Speaker 1: Do they have people living in space? Yeah? The year
14:53
Speaker 1: I was born. It's crazy. And it was actually a
14:56
Speaker 1: combination of a couple of different system one Mas and
15:00
Speaker 1: the soyas The Almas was a military system and the
15:04
Speaker 1: soyas Is was the actual spacecraft that ferried people to
15:07
Speaker 1: and fro. They're still using that thing, so American Astro
15:10
Speaker 1: not to get to the I S s is on
15:11
Speaker 1: Soya's um rockets. Yeah, what what number they had? I wonder? Oh,
15:17
Speaker 1: who knows? Who knows? A lot? A lot they launched
15:21
Speaker 1: them a lot from the Kazakhstan. I think very nice.
15:26
Speaker 1: Uh uhtt long um had three main compartments. Um, your
15:34
Speaker 1: your standard compartments, which are like dining in recreation, food
15:38
Speaker 1: and water storage. You gotta have your toilet exercise equipment,
15:42
Speaker 1: and then your science e stuff. Yeah, that's sciences stuff.
15:46
Speaker 1: That's a big deal because not only are they looking
15:49
Speaker 1: at how to make crystals better, they're also studying, um,
15:52
Speaker 1: the effects of micro gravity on the human body, which
15:54
Speaker 1: we're still getting a handle lot. Yeah, we should do
15:57
Speaker 1: an entire episode on how space affects your body. Okay,
16:00
Speaker 1: I think that would be like, I think I got
16:03
Speaker 1: three or four episode ideas of this one article. Well, yeah,
16:05
Speaker 1: we should do one just on the I S S too. Um.
16:09
Speaker 1: But well, just kind of briefly, one of the things
16:11
Speaker 1: that they found so far about living in space is
16:13
Speaker 1: that your bone mineral density decreases by one percent a month,
16:18
Speaker 1: which you're like one percent there's still left he cares
16:22
Speaker 1: here on Earth. If you're in a senior adult you
16:26
Speaker 1: lose about one percent of bone mass a year. So
16:29
Speaker 1: that's pretty significant. And another thing that they found out
16:32
Speaker 1: was that the living in microgravity. When you're here on Earth,
16:36
Speaker 1: your fluids and blood and stuff tend to accumulate in
16:38
Speaker 1: your lower extremities, right Uh, in microgravity, it tends to
16:42
Speaker 1: accumulate up in your upper body and your upper chest
16:45
Speaker 1: and in your head and your brains, like, oh, I'm
16:49
Speaker 1: I'm bathed in this stuff. I need to shut down
16:52
Speaker 1: production on fluids, including blood, so that when astronauts get
16:56
Speaker 1: back on Earth, they tend to be fainty because they
17:00
Speaker 1: don't have enough blood for a while until their bodies like, WHOA,
17:03
Speaker 1: something weird just happened. I need to start making blood.
17:06
Speaker 1: And they say, I'm fainting because of space. Somebody give
17:08
Speaker 1: me some tang My bloodcher is low. Uh. The other
17:11
Speaker 1: thing they found out was in space, no one can
17:13
Speaker 1: hear you scream. Yeah, they try it fifteen after every hour,
17:18
Speaker 1: all the astronauts scream as loud as they can and
17:20
Speaker 1: nobody can hear him. And that, of course, was the
17:23
Speaker 1: famous tagline from the first Alien movie. Oh really, yeah,
17:27
Speaker 1: I remember seeing the ad with the big egg space
17:30
Speaker 1: No can you scream? I know. I was just though,
17:32
Speaker 1: that's terrifying. I'm gonna watch it. Uh. Oh. One other
17:37
Speaker 1: thing that they're learning about affects and gravity. So Scott Kelly,
17:40
Speaker 1: the astronaut who famously just spent a year on the
17:42
Speaker 1: I S s um he has a twin who's also
17:45
Speaker 1: an astronaut, leave his name is Mike, and um, Mike
17:50
Speaker 1: has been studied here on Earth. You gotta slit those
17:54
Speaker 1: guys up over the same over the same year that
17:57
Speaker 1: Scott has, and now they're comparing Apparently Scott came down
18:01
Speaker 1: and he was like an inch or too shorter than
18:03
Speaker 1: his identical twin. That was just one thing, But they're
18:06
Speaker 1: they're examining them on a genetic level to see what
18:09
Speaker 1: differences of have happened, so you can get a better
18:12
Speaker 1: handle on what living in gravity does to the human body.
18:15
Speaker 1: He said, I'm shorter and more fainty for starters. He
18:19
Speaker 1: just felt dead away and they just slapped his face
18:21
Speaker 1: and poured tang down his throat. Well, I think what's
18:24
Speaker 1: lost on a lot of people is that these are real.
18:27
Speaker 1: I mean, human experimentation is going on, and who knows
18:30
Speaker 1: what the long term effect is going to be. These
18:32
Speaker 1: people are really like sacrificing potentially, you know right, I
18:36
Speaker 1: mean not just being away from family and stuff, but
18:39
Speaker 1: who knows, faint he might turn into something really bad. Well,
18:41
Speaker 1: not only that, they're also exposed to solar radiation and
18:45
Speaker 1: just space radiation that the Earth's atmosphere protects us from.
18:50
Speaker 1: They're exposed to it, and um, apparently there's a huge
18:53
Speaker 1: possibility of their lifetime risk of cancer just goes through
18:56
Speaker 1: the roof from moving out there. So yeah, there's a
18:58
Speaker 1: lot of questions we have that it's good that we're
19:01
Speaker 1: not all just living out in space because we can.
19:03
Speaker 1: We got a lot of stuff to figure out beforehand. Heroes, sir,
19:07
Speaker 1: That's what I say. So uh, the Sayas ten crew
19:12
Speaker 1: um for that very first uh Saliott space station that
19:17
Speaker 1: Russia had. They were they were supposed to live up there,
19:21
Speaker 1: but they couldn't dock correctly, so they could never enter
19:24
Speaker 1: the space station, so they never could even get in,
19:27
Speaker 1: big big disappointment. They just hung their heads and put
19:33
Speaker 1: in reverse in the little modulant. So the Saya's eleven
19:39
Speaker 1: crew actually successfully lived there for twenty four days in
19:44
Speaker 1: which is remarkable, but very sadly they all perished upon
19:49
Speaker 1: re entry coming back to Earth. Yeah, there um capsule
19:53
Speaker 1: depressurized and they there capsule at the time wasn't designed
19:58
Speaker 1: for them to wear suits, so they um, they were
20:01
Speaker 1: all asphyxiated just like died instantly, right pretty much. Yeah,
20:05
Speaker 1: they would have like lost consciousness almost immediately. So after
20:09
Speaker 1: the eleven soy is eleven they launched a different space
20:13
Speaker 1: station altogether, the Sliot two. That one didn't even get
20:17
Speaker 1: up into orbit, so they were like, uh yet uh
20:21
Speaker 1: went through three, four and five h and pretty quick succession,
20:25
Speaker 1: um and each one basically they got better at getting
20:29
Speaker 1: people to and from and they could stay up there
20:32
Speaker 1: longer and longer. Yeah. I think the last one was
20:34
Speaker 1: launched in two and it was up there until like
20:38
Speaker 1: nine two or ninety four, and they actually used it
20:43
Speaker 1: as like um, they they when they launched the Mirror,
20:46
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about and I think nineteen ninety six,
20:49
Speaker 1: so I guess it was up there then. They were
20:51
Speaker 1: going back and forth between Soliott seven and the Mirror.
20:55
Speaker 1: I guess probably going like, oh we can we can
20:58
Speaker 1: use this vodka over here. You gotta go get it
21:01
Speaker 1: from Salute and take it over to the Mirror. So
21:03
Speaker 1: it was up there for a while. They got there,
21:05
Speaker 1: they figured it out and one of the big differences
21:08
Speaker 1: between the early Solutes, Chuck in the later ones was
21:10
Speaker 1: that there was a docking a secondary docking module. Yeah.
21:15
Speaker 1: The first one's only had one parking space essentially, right,
21:17
Speaker 1: and so you had the parking space for the crew
21:20
Speaker 1: that was there, and if they needed supplies, well t s.
21:24
Speaker 1: But if you had a second docking port then you
21:27
Speaker 1: can use um. Well, they used an unmanned ship called
21:30
Speaker 1: Progress two ferry supplies from Earth to the Salute stations. Yeah.
21:35
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that it took them up to the Salute
21:38
Speaker 1: six to realize they needed another parking space. Yeah, because
21:41
Speaker 1: you know you're gonna forget something right, you left the
21:44
Speaker 1: iron on home. We're stuck up here. No one can
21:48
Speaker 1: visit us. Well, like you said that, they figured it out,
21:51
Speaker 1: which is wonderful. Uh. And that all led to the
21:54
Speaker 1: United States in nineteen seventy three launching their very famous
22:00
Speaker 1: guy Lab one space station, which says the best patch
22:04
Speaker 1: of any NASA related space based anything, Skylab one is
22:09
Speaker 1: the best. Yeah, sky Lab was awesome, but it um
22:12
Speaker 1: it got off on a very bad start, on a
22:15
Speaker 1: bad foot because upon launch, like just getting it out there,
22:19
Speaker 1: it had these two main solar panels. One of them
22:21
Speaker 1: was completely ripped off, the other one didn't extend out
22:25
Speaker 1: like it should have, and so this thing almost burned
22:28
Speaker 1: up completely initially because it had very little power and
22:31
Speaker 1: they couldn't control the heat, right, it couldn't cool it
22:34
Speaker 1: the interior the capsule went up to like a hundred
22:36
Speaker 1: and twenty six. So they said, hey, guys, we need
22:41
Speaker 1: you to go up there and fix this. And they
22:43
Speaker 1: actually there were three different crews that were that were
22:47
Speaker 1: sent to Skylab on Apollo capsules and um. The Skylab
22:52
Speaker 1: module itself was actually designed roughly initially by Warner von
22:56
Speaker 1: braun Um out of a Saturn five moon rocket. The
22:59
Speaker 1: third stage of it became sky Lab, and I think
23:03
Speaker 1: at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, not the
23:06
Speaker 1: one at Dullest, but the the one that's in like
23:08
Speaker 1: the like around the mall, and I think it has
23:11
Speaker 1: a replica of Skylab you can walk through. Oh cool,
23:14
Speaker 1: which is so awesome, dude, I would love to do that.
23:17
Speaker 1: But so the three crews that got sent up there, chuck.
23:19
Speaker 1: They managed to kind of like put Skylight back together
23:22
Speaker 1: with duck tape and bubblegum. Yeah, that first one, Skylab two.
23:26
Speaker 1: They just sent them up a week and a half
23:28
Speaker 1: after the fit, well not fail lunch, but problematic launch.
23:32
Speaker 1: And it's so funny how some of this NASA stuff
23:35
Speaker 1: is so simple. They said, go up there and essentially
23:40
Speaker 1: take this big sunshade like it looks like an umbrella
23:43
Speaker 1: and pop it open to cool it down. And then
23:46
Speaker 1: see that that solar panel that didn't stretch out far enough,
23:49
Speaker 1: stretch it out, and see that stretch it out. And
23:53
Speaker 1: they did. Uh, Commander Charles Pete, Conrad, Paul Whites, and
23:56
Speaker 1: Joseph Kerwin essentially saved sky Lab. Yeah, right off the bat,
24:01
Speaker 1: and not just then. There were again there were three
24:03
Speaker 1: crews that kind of did one after the other. They
24:06
Speaker 1: didn't overlap, UM, but they finally got the thing working.
24:09
Speaker 1: And I think the last crew spent eighty four days
24:12
Speaker 1: in orbit. Yeah, the first one spent the next one
24:17
Speaker 1: fifty nine in the final one eighty four days in
24:19
Speaker 1: the seventies and I remember, UM, and this is a
24:23
Speaker 1: big deal, you know, this was the first time they
24:25
Speaker 1: were testing these long duration man missions UM to see, like,
24:31
Speaker 1: you know, can we go to the Moon because it
24:33
Speaker 1: takes a while to get there and back right, That
24:35
Speaker 1: was the thing, Like all the only data we had
24:37
Speaker 1: was on Moon missions, which is about a two week mission,
24:41
Speaker 1: so we didn't have any data on what happened to
24:43
Speaker 1: people longer than that. Can we can we set up
24:46
Speaker 1: a shop there colonize the moon? Even so they called
24:49
Speaker 1: anything over two weeks a long duration spaceflight. Uh. And
24:52
Speaker 1: I remember in nineteen seventy nine. I remember being an
24:55
Speaker 1: eight year old kid, and I remember hearing about because
24:58
Speaker 1: this is you know in the seventies when families would
25:01
Speaker 1: sit around and watch the news and it's like how
25:03
Speaker 1: you got all your information? And I remember sitting around
25:06
Speaker 1: and hearing that sky Lab is coming back down to
25:10
Speaker 1: Earth in a unpredictable way, and I remember being sort
25:14
Speaker 1: of scared and thinking like, wow, this is a little
25:17
Speaker 1: weird and kind of a big deal. Yeah, Like even
25:19
Speaker 1: little eight year old Chuck knew like something didn't seem
25:22
Speaker 1: quite right. There are a lot of people who are
25:24
Speaker 1: really anxious about it because NASA very famously said that, um,
25:28
Speaker 1: everybody calmed down. There's there's a one in one hundred
25:32
Speaker 1: and fifty two chants that somebody will be killed by
25:36
Speaker 1: sky Lab. Well, yeah, they like one in one fifty two.
25:39
Speaker 1: You want to hear numbers from NASA like one in
25:41
Speaker 1: a million or one in a billion, not one in
25:43
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty two. You're like, I know two
25:45
Speaker 1: hundred people, I know a hundred and fifty three people. Uh.
25:50
Speaker 1: It also forced NASSA to admit UM, we were so
25:54
Speaker 1: excited about getting this thing up there, we didn't really
25:56
Speaker 1: think a lot about how to control its descent UM,
26:00
Speaker 1: because that was essentially the story. They They were like,
26:03
Speaker 1: we can't, we don't really know how to guide this
26:05
Speaker 1: thing back down. They said it would quote cost too
26:08
Speaker 1: much to have UM designed in a way to bring
26:11
Speaker 1: it down safely. Yeah, and I think they were there
26:14
Speaker 1: in a hurry. Well. Also, the problem is they thought
26:16
Speaker 1: that it would just it's orbit would decay a little
26:19
Speaker 1: bit and then fall into basically that orbit of space
26:22
Speaker 1: chunk circling the Earth and would just stay there indefinitely.
26:26
Speaker 1: But it's orbit decayed more than expected because there was
26:29
Speaker 1: solar flare activity that NASA hadn't anticipated, and so all
26:33
Speaker 1: of a sudden, sky Labs on a collision course with Earth.
26:36
Speaker 1: NASA saying it'll it'll probably enter somewhere over this thousand
26:40
Speaker 1: kilometer stretch of Earth that includes Australia. So heads up
26:46
Speaker 1: Australia and UM. There were lots of like sky Lab parties, UM.
26:51
Speaker 1: Because it's America in the seventies, people went like Skylab
26:54
Speaker 1: crazy disco parties UM, and the San Francisco Examiner actually
27:00
Speaker 1: UM offered ten thousand dollars to anybody who could bring
27:03
Speaker 1: in a legitimate piece of sky Lab within seventy two
27:06
Speaker 1: hours of it crashing. And some kid actually collected Yeah
27:10
Speaker 1: in Australian. Yeah, he got on a plane. He had
27:13
Speaker 1: a little piece of sky Lab. Because where to end
27:15
Speaker 1: up crashing and the esperance Australia when you're perth, Yeah,
27:19
Speaker 1: I mean mostly in the ocean. Yeah, but they did
27:23
Speaker 1: get a pretty good amount of debris in Australia. Yeah,
27:26
Speaker 1: like the sizeable parts. But it's Australia. They're tough, they're
27:28
Speaker 1: like everything tries to kill us. You're silly. Space Station
27:32
Speaker 1: can't do it right. So yeah, this kid flew over
27:36
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and said here sky Lab. His name
27:40
Speaker 1: was Stanthorpe and he was seventeen, and like, without even
27:43
Speaker 1: thinking twice about it, he grabbed it, hopped on a
27:46
Speaker 1: plane and went to San Francisco, like you said, and
27:48
Speaker 1: they examined or paid him, which I did the West
27:51
Speaker 1: Aig inflation calculator. That's about thirty three thou dollars in
27:55
Speaker 1: today's money. Not bad, No, I'd do that, hop on
27:58
Speaker 1: a plane for that. That's a salary of as your teacher,
28:01
Speaker 1: right badly. Yeah. Uh, you can also buy pieces of
28:05
Speaker 1: sky Lab today if you've got some dough and an
28:07
Speaker 1: Internet connection. Alleged pieces of sky Lab. Well, sure, just
28:14
Speaker 1: like anything, it should be uh not verified, what do
28:17
Speaker 1: you call it? Verified? Authenticated? Supposedly NASA's instead of exerting
28:24
Speaker 1: its domain over pieces of sky Lab, the debris that
28:27
Speaker 1: was found in saying you give a back that some
28:30
Speaker 1: people sent their pieces to NASA, NASA authenticated them and
28:35
Speaker 1: send them back mounted saying this is an official piece
28:38
Speaker 1: of sky Lab to the people who mailed it in.
28:40
Speaker 1: Good peeps, Good peeps wearing brown polyester pants up to
28:46
Speaker 1: their chests. All right, buddy, let's take a break in um,
28:50
Speaker 1: let's go for a little jog around our gravity office,
28:57
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about mirror and I s all right,
29:26
Speaker 1: all right. We talked about the Soviet which was the
29:30
Speaker 1: Soviet Union's big first success and some failures, but overall,
29:36
Speaker 1: I think they saw it as a success. Right And
29:38
Speaker 1: at the same time, a couple of years later, America
29:41
Speaker 1: had sky LAMB and then the Soviets said, we can
29:45
Speaker 1: do better than than what we're doing. We can do
29:48
Speaker 1: better than anybody else. We're going to create the mirror. Yeah.
29:51
Speaker 1: And by the way, Skyla was not supposed to be permanent. No,
29:55
Speaker 1: that was never the intention, but mirror was. Was it
30:00
Speaker 1: supposed to be permanent? Yeah, okay, so were the later
30:04
Speaker 1: um soliots Okay, so the mirror definitely was meant to
30:08
Speaker 1: be a permanent one. All right. Well, the first crew
30:12
Speaker 1: cosmonauts Leonid Kasim Vladimir solely off off nice it's a
30:20
Speaker 1: great name. Um. I think it was just those two dudes. Uh.
30:25
Speaker 1: They shuttled between the sally At seven which is being
30:27
Speaker 1: retired in mirror, and there was some like you said that,
30:31
Speaker 1: there was some cross over there, right and overlap. They
30:34
Speaker 1: had to get the vodka. Yeah, they had to get
30:36
Speaker 1: the vodka. And they spent seventy five days on the
30:39
Speaker 1: mirror and it was continually manned over the next ten years.
30:42
Speaker 1: And you know, manned and built. It's not they they
30:45
Speaker 1: build these things out there or assemble them out there. Um,
30:49
Speaker 1: I guess we should say. But they don't just launch
30:52
Speaker 1: a space station right like ready to go. They carry
30:56
Speaker 1: pieces of it out there just like I S S.
30:59
Speaker 1: And they put them together. Although I think it was
31:02
Speaker 1: we'll see you later on. I think the Chinese launched
31:04
Speaker 1: a full space station. Of course they did. I think
31:08
Speaker 1: they did, um, but we're talking. Come on. So the
31:13
Speaker 1: Mirror had twelve twelve main parts, which we won't go
31:18
Speaker 1: over all those because we don't like to just read lists.
31:22
Speaker 1: But you know, it's something you would expect. It was
31:24
Speaker 1: a ge whiz space station, a lot of everything, a
31:27
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of modules, living quarters, transfer compartments,
31:31
Speaker 1: docking places, had more than one parking space. They figured
31:34
Speaker 1: the old mess out. Yeah, you know, I was like,
31:36
Speaker 1: you know, we should have guests, and they did have guests.
31:39
Speaker 1: They had American guests actually, which was pretty cool. It
31:42
Speaker 1: wasn't until the nineties after the Soviet Union dissolved, and
31:46
Speaker 1: actually there was a cosmonaut aboard Mirror when the Soviet
31:49
Speaker 1: Union dissolved in December. Um. His name was Sergey Kirkov
31:56
Speaker 1: Keev Kirkakv, it started to say, and you would think, yeah, uh,
32:01
Speaker 1: And he was known as the last Soviet citizen because
32:04
Speaker 1: apparently being in space made him immune from the dissolving
32:08
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. Oh really yeah, not really, but
32:11
Speaker 1: that's what everybody said about him, whether he liked it
32:14
Speaker 1: or not. Well, the Mirror, they had some problems kind
32:17
Speaker 1: of later in its life. There was a fire one
32:20
Speaker 1: year uh and then that pro the supply ship was
32:23
Speaker 1: called the Progress I think you mentioned. It actually crashed
32:26
Speaker 1: into the mirror trying to park and it's a little
32:29
Speaker 1: parking space, which damaged it. And at that point they said,
32:32
Speaker 1: you know what, Uh, we should just make this thing
32:35
Speaker 1: space junk, even though you thought it was going to
32:37
Speaker 1: be permanent. Uh. The US is talking about this I. S.
32:41
Speaker 1: S Station. They want us to come help them with uh.
32:44
Speaker 1: And there was a big campaign to keep the Mirror
32:45
Speaker 1: alive called Keep Mirror Alive uh. And private corporation stepped
32:49
Speaker 1: in and said, no, let us take it over. Let's
32:52
Speaker 1: privatize this thing. And they said, yet, I'm not gonna
32:56
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, We're not gonna just hand over space station. Okay, No,
33:01
Speaker 1: we're gonna crash it into the Earth. If I can't
33:04
Speaker 1: have you, no one can't. Pretty much, so um, they
33:07
Speaker 1: had a little bit uh more advanced capabilities in Skylab
33:11
Speaker 1: had as far as directionally um. And in February two
33:15
Speaker 1: thousand one, it uh. They slowed those engines down and
33:19
Speaker 1: it re entered the atmosphere. On March two one burned
33:23
Speaker 1: up broke up and again, uh, tried to kill Australia.
33:27
Speaker 1: I know, Australia is like, what the eight Why is
33:30
Speaker 1: everyone trying to land their space junk on us? But
33:33
Speaker 1: it was about a thousand miles east of Australia in
33:35
Speaker 1: the ocean. Um has anyone found these things? That's what
33:38
Speaker 1: I was wondering, mire at the bottom of the ocean.
33:42
Speaker 1: I'm sure somebody's found some parts of it. Pretty neat. Yeah,
33:46
Speaker 1: talk about like space records at bottom the ocean. That's
33:49
Speaker 1: a movie. Who was it? Was it Jeff Bezos that
33:51
Speaker 1: went and got like, uh one of the Apollo really
33:55
Speaker 1: stages that had been scuttled in the ocean recently? Probably?
33:59
Speaker 1: I think it was yep Asos or James Cameron. We
34:02
Speaker 1: talked about him too much though. Uh So that brings
34:05
Speaker 1: us to I S S. Ronald Reagan. I said, you
34:09
Speaker 1: know what, I was about to do a Reagan, but
34:13
Speaker 1: I thought the better. I think everybody wants to hear
34:17
Speaker 1: your Reagan. I don't want to do it. He said,
34:20
Speaker 1: let's let's he said, hey, man, let's get an A S.
34:23
Speaker 1: S station going. Is that good? We'll call it the
34:27
Speaker 1: International Space Station and it's gonna be super expensive, so
34:31
Speaker 1: we need some help. Um, let's partner up with with
34:36
Speaker 1: fourteen other countries, Canada, Japan, Brazil and then the European
34:40
Speaker 1: Space Agency, which is the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands,
34:45
Speaker 1: did Mark, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden. And he said, as
34:48
Speaker 1: a good faith measure, let's invite the Soviets. M hm,
34:53
Speaker 1: I don't know if that was all Russia by then,
34:56
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're right, Yeah, you're right. And the Russian said, sure,
34:59
Speaker 1: why not, we don't doing anything and not just being friendly,
35:02
Speaker 1: but you know, they they were probably the second leading
35:05
Speaker 1: uh uh well, I don't know by that point there
35:09
Speaker 1: were other players in space science. Yeah, but they were
35:13
Speaker 1: still pretty highly regarded yeah big time. Yeah, yeah, probably
35:17
Speaker 1: more than they get credit for again over here. So
35:20
Speaker 1: they started putting the I S S in orbit, and um,
35:24
Speaker 1: the first people showed up from it was launched for
35:27
Speaker 1: They were launched from Russia in two thousand and they
35:30
Speaker 1: spent about five months. They're like basically getting everything up
35:34
Speaker 1: and running, taking um all of the uh the little
35:38
Speaker 1: descant packets out of everything, like they do not eat
35:42
Speaker 1: things that keep stuff dry silica jel yeah, um, and um,
35:48
Speaker 1: pulling off all of the cellophane from everything. Well they
35:51
Speaker 1: left it on the lamp shades, which I thought was tasteless.
35:55
Speaker 1: It's shiny. Yeah. Um, so they've been living up there.
35:59
Speaker 1: Like I said, they just launched the one I'm sorry,
36:03
Speaker 1: but one orbit of Earth and um, we do one
36:08
Speaker 1: on the I S. But I did look a little
36:11
Speaker 1: bit into their day to day life. Um. They work
36:14
Speaker 1: about ten hours a day, uh money through Friday, about
36:19
Speaker 1: half that on a Saturday, and then they take Sunday
36:21
Speaker 1: off and then the rest of the time is you know, relaxation,
36:27
Speaker 1: emailing your family, hanging out pool side, face timing. Um.
36:32
Speaker 1: They have sixteen sunrises and sunsets today, which is decidedly
36:36
Speaker 1: weird on your body. So they generally just keep those
36:39
Speaker 1: windows closed so they can get on a reg sketch.
36:43
Speaker 1: And um, apparently the food isn't great. They don't love
36:46
Speaker 1: the food. Um, and they have to overspice it. I
36:50
Speaker 1: didn't know that one of the things space does is
36:52
Speaker 1: reduce your sense of taste. I've heard that in microgravity
36:56
Speaker 1: tastes like styrofun. Yeah, so apparently they like really over
37:00
Speaker 1: everything to try and make it palatable. Um, and they
37:03
Speaker 1: have to be really careful of crumbs because oh yeah,
37:08
Speaker 1: remember Homer Simpson, do you remember one of the great
37:10
Speaker 1: all time scenes when you opened the bag of chips
37:14
Speaker 1: in space? Great great scene. Um, and then pooping and
37:21
Speaker 1: pp I gotta go somewhere. They have two toilets, only
37:27
Speaker 1: two and um oh there's usually only three or four
37:31
Speaker 1: people up there. There's six right now? Yeah, with two toilets. Yeah,
37:37
Speaker 1: how many hair dryers? Who knows? They keep their hair
37:40
Speaker 1: short though, because because there's very few hair dryers in space. Well,
37:44
Speaker 1: there's no showers. I mean they can wash themselves. They
37:47
Speaker 1: have like water jets, but not the same. Yeah, not
37:50
Speaker 1: the same, man. I'll bet that first shower when they
37:52
Speaker 1: get back down on Earth feels so good. Yeah. But
37:55
Speaker 1: there's two toilets. They use a fan driven suction system
37:58
Speaker 1: and you have to latch yourself to the toilet. Oh
38:02
Speaker 1: yeah for that too. And there are restraining bars to
38:04
Speaker 1: ensure there's a good seal, because you know what happens
38:06
Speaker 1: if there's not a good seal and microgravity, things will
38:09
Speaker 1: float away. Uh. And then there's a lever that they
38:12
Speaker 1: hit a suction whole slides open and a big stream
38:16
Speaker 1: of air carries the waste away. The solids are collected
38:20
Speaker 1: actually into an aluminum container and the they are then
38:24
Speaker 1: transferred to the Progress to take away the little shuttle
38:28
Speaker 1: ship like, here's all our poop. Progress is like, yeah,
38:32
Speaker 1: I wonder what they calls progress. And then the pp
38:37
Speaker 1: UH is evacuated by a hose that's attached to the
38:40
Speaker 1: front of the toilet. Uh they do. I was getting there,
38:46
Speaker 1: but sure, I'm sorry. Now it's recycled. It's a recovery
38:49
Speaker 1: system and they eventually recycle it back into drinking waters.
38:53
Speaker 1: UM and the toilets UH for PPR anatomically correct. They
38:58
Speaker 1: have these funnel adapters. So men and women have different
39:02
Speaker 1: adapters because you know, they have different parts. Yes they do,
39:08
Speaker 1: they do have different parts that like a second grader,
39:12
Speaker 1: I just you don't think about this stuff. Like that's
39:14
Speaker 1: the first thing I thought. I was like, oh, man,
39:15
Speaker 1: how they eat, how they poop? But what do they
39:17
Speaker 1: watch movies? Do they watch movies? Yeah? That the they
39:20
Speaker 1: just sit back. I think it was the Atlantic had
39:22
Speaker 1: a great photos spread of photos that this new mission
39:26
Speaker 1: is taking of uh space and the Earth and you know,
39:30
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But then pictures on board and um
39:35
Speaker 1: one of them they were that this huge flat screen
39:37
Speaker 1: watching The Revenant watching the Revenue. Huh, that's what it
39:40
Speaker 1: looked like. I could see the two guys on a horse.
39:42
Speaker 1: It was hard to tell because it was in the background,
39:44
Speaker 1: but I think it was a Revenant that are cloudy
39:47
Speaker 1: with the chance of meat pall. Probably not the movie Gravity.
39:52
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, they were probably like that could never happen.
39:58
Speaker 1: When Neil Degrass Tyson lost his mo about gravity, hey
40:02
Speaker 1: he's your pal, he went on a Twitter ran about it. Um,
40:06
Speaker 1: then then we should talk about the Chinese, because I
40:08
Speaker 1: think it's been unfair not to. The Chinese launched something
40:11
Speaker 1: called Tangong one UM back in two thousand three. They
40:16
Speaker 1: became the third nation on the planet to launch human
40:20
Speaker 1: into space UM and they launched their space There's space
40:26
Speaker 1: station in two thousand eleven, and there's been two UM
40:31
Speaker 1: two missions to to the space station. I think it's
40:36
Speaker 1: it's it's no longer active, but it's still up there.
40:39
Speaker 1: But the Chinese admitted this year that they've lost contact
40:43
Speaker 1: with the space station. It's no longer under their control,
40:46
Speaker 1: so it may end up coming back down to Earth
40:48
Speaker 1: and we'll have a new Skylab party for it. But
40:52
Speaker 1: the um. The two missions included China's first two women astronauts,
40:57
Speaker 1: Liu Yang and Wang Yaping, and um, they were in
41:01
Speaker 1: two twelve and two thousand thirteen, and they did I mean,
41:05
Speaker 1: they lived in space for a while, just like everybody
41:08
Speaker 1: else had. But the Chinese don't participate in the I
41:10
Speaker 1: S S. I don't know if they've not been invited
41:12
Speaker 1: or if they decline an invitation, but they're doing their
41:15
Speaker 1: own parallel thing, UM, which I would get the impression
41:19
Speaker 1: that's making people nervous. Interesting. Well, I know it's important
41:22
Speaker 1: that they've had uh, women astronauts, female astronauts on the
41:28
Speaker 1: I S S because you know, you you need to
41:32
Speaker 1: see what space does to them. And I just wonder
41:34
Speaker 1: if they're gonna like get to the point where like,
41:36
Speaker 1: well we need to if we really want to call
41:38
Speaker 1: an ize space, we need to see what happens when
41:40
Speaker 1: a baby is up there, or give birth in outer space,
41:45
Speaker 1: or have a ten year old or a seventy five
41:47
Speaker 1: year old man a ten year old aboard a space
41:50
Speaker 1: station for like a year. Yeah, oh man, no, thank you. Um.
41:55
Speaker 1: There's one other thing I wanted to mention, Chuck. There's
41:58
Speaker 1: the there's talk about out UM saving a lot a
42:02
Speaker 1: lot of money with the space station by putting it
42:06
Speaker 1: what's called lagrange point And there's La grange point, L
42:10
Speaker 1: four and L five and they are these um, these
42:15
Speaker 1: little the spots between the Earth and the Moon to
42:18
Speaker 1: where the gravity between the Earth and the Moon is counterbalanced.
42:21
Speaker 1: So all it does is just go in orbit around
42:24
Speaker 1: the Earth and the Moon and it will stay in
42:25
Speaker 1: that orbit forever because gravity is not pulling on it
42:28
Speaker 1: one way or the other, so you don't have to
42:30
Speaker 1: use fuel to keep it in that orbit forever. Right,
42:34
Speaker 1: And this is actually like an early idea that that
42:37
Speaker 1: I think Arthur C. Clark was the first to put
42:39
Speaker 1: it out there in nineteen one. And these lagrange points
42:43
Speaker 1: are like orbits like ninety miles across. You can put
42:46
Speaker 1: a bunch of space stations in these things and just
42:49
Speaker 1: leave them out there. And there's actually something called the
42:52
Speaker 1: L five Society that came about UM that is all
42:56
Speaker 1: about this kind of thing. Crazy. Well, they they plan
43:01
Speaker 1: to disband on a space station in the L five
43:06
Speaker 1: band at some point in the future when they all
43:09
Speaker 1: come together there for the first time. Sound wonderful. Yeah,
43:15
Speaker 1: one more thing. Valerie Polyakov, record holder right, four hundred
43:20
Speaker 1: and thirty eight days he did aboard mirror in n
43:25
Speaker 1: and he had done like two d and thirty eight
43:27
Speaker 1: days before then. Crazy. I bet he's super fainty, you know,
43:32
Speaker 1: all the time he's rushing though he can take it.
43:35
Speaker 1: Do you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right, Well,
43:37
Speaker 1: let's say for space stations for now. If you want
43:40
Speaker 1: to learn more about him, you can type those words
43:42
Speaker 1: in the search part how stuff works. And uh, since
43:44
Speaker 1: I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm gonna
43:49
Speaker 1: call this um oh Chuck's graduation post. So I put
43:54
Speaker 1: out a post about my nephew graduating high school. Oh yeah,
43:58
Speaker 1: did he really is? Grad way from high school? And
44:01
Speaker 1: also the same year, my niece Reagan graduated college Premiorwood College,
44:08
Speaker 1: moving to New York City like a good girl, and
44:11
Speaker 1: my other niece Abby moved on matriculated into high school
44:15
Speaker 1: from middle school. Nothing better than matriculation, nothing better. So
44:19
Speaker 1: I went to know his graduation and it really like
44:22
Speaker 1: affected me much more than I thought it would, because
44:24
Speaker 1: I haven't been to a graduation since my own, like,
44:27
Speaker 1: and I didn't walk into college one, so I literally
44:29
Speaker 1: have not been to a ceremony and it just stirred
44:33
Speaker 1: up all these amazing feelings. No, it was really really
44:39
Speaker 1: neat just to hear these kids and their speeches, and
44:43
Speaker 1: and I put a Facebook post. I was like, you
44:44
Speaker 1: know what, we're great, don't people. Millennials get a lot
44:48
Speaker 1: of crap, But like, talked to a seventeen year old
44:51
Speaker 1: for a little while, who's doing it right and and
44:54
Speaker 1: we're headed in the right direction like this very empathetic, carrying,
44:57
Speaker 1: like forward thinking generation. So it was it was really
45:01
Speaker 1: neat things. So I just congratulations to all the graduates,
45:04
Speaker 1: especially um, well, if you're listening, then I guess you
45:07
Speaker 1: are a listener. But all the stuff you should know,
45:09
Speaker 1: listeners that have been with us, like throughout high school,
45:12
Speaker 1: we appreciate. Um. A girl named Hannah, I want to say,
45:14
Speaker 1: rode in and asked for any advice for graduation. That's right,
45:18
Speaker 1: and she mentioned you in this speech. Yeah yeah, so
45:20
Speaker 1: pretty to her as well. Pretty great stuff. But you're right,
45:24
Speaker 1: all stuff you should know listeners who are graduating or matriculating. Congratulation, Yes,
45:30
Speaker 1: very big accomplishment. So this from Brandy and Kansas. Hey, guys,
45:34
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for that Facebook post
45:36
Speaker 1: about now it's graduation. How you have so much hope
45:39
Speaker 1: for the up and coming generation. I'm really excited about
45:41
Speaker 1: the world changers coming up and so rare to hear
45:43
Speaker 1: someone come out and say how awesome they are on
45:45
Speaker 1: that thread. Have you considered it doing a show on
45:48
Speaker 1: Kids Today, Fallacy. That's a well documented phenomenon where each
45:52
Speaker 1: generation downplays the bad things our own generation didn't believe.
45:56
Speaker 1: The ones that follow are lazy, spoiled, entitled. Uh. There
45:59
Speaker 1: are quotes literally dating back two thousands of years ago
46:02
Speaker 1: of this very thing. Uh. And the music stinks too.
46:06
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's the other part of that. Yeah, yeah,
46:10
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, yeah, the music today stinks our
46:12
Speaker 1: rights better. I would love to hear you explain this nonsense,
46:15
Speaker 1: how people stop being so crotchety and instead recognize their
46:19
Speaker 1: role in helping to shape the future generations. Second request,
46:23
Speaker 1: come to Kansas. You guys make fun of us enough
46:26
Speaker 1: and it's time to pace a visit. We topped some
46:28
Speaker 1: lists for the most beautiful sunsets and landscapes and also
46:32
Speaker 1: have cities on national lists the places to Live. It
46:36
Speaker 1: takes more than a beautiful sunset to get us to
46:39
Speaker 1: do a live show. Analystic goals. We make fun of
46:44
Speaker 1: Kansas because of our good friend to Aaron Cooper and
46:49
Speaker 1: our buddy Isaac McNary is really the two people that
46:53
Speaker 1: we're targeting when we make fun of Kansas and the governor,
46:56
Speaker 1: And it's all out of love because Isaaca and Aaron
47:00
Speaker 1: are great. And we met Aaron at our show in
47:02
Speaker 1: Denver and he's just as nice and cool as I
47:05
Speaker 1: thought he was gonna be. And we met our pal
47:07
Speaker 1: Tyler Murphy too, and met Tyler and his friends Timothy
47:11
Speaker 1: and Sarah, and our friend Jane Jenabel was in the audience,
47:15
Speaker 1: and our old buddy Greg Storkin was in the audience.
47:17
Speaker 1: It was something else. Yeah, Denver was like these some
47:20
Speaker 1: of our oldest, oldest fans were in attendance, so that
47:23
Speaker 1: was wonderful. Anyway, we're not coming to Kansas. Thanks for
47:27
Speaker 1: a great show, guys, only have a few episodes left
47:30
Speaker 1: to go from got up and then I will enter
47:32
Speaker 1: the pit of despair, so at least satisfy one of
47:35
Speaker 1: my requests who can help pull me out? And as
47:37
Speaker 1: Brandy in Manhattan, Kansas, thank you Brandy. Good luck in
47:41
Speaker 1: the pit of despair. Uh, if you want to get
47:45
Speaker 1: in touch of this. You can hang out with us
47:46
Speaker 1: on social media. We're on Instagram and Twitter, s y
47:51
Speaker 1: s K podcast and on Facebook at Facebook dot com
47:53
Speaker 1: slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
47:55
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com
47:58
Speaker 1: and as always, joined us at our him on the web,
48:01
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
48:08
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
48:10
Speaker 1: dot com